Planar plasmonic terahertz waveguides based on periodically corrugated metal films

We demonstrate that a one-dimensional periodically corrugated metal film can be used to create planar terahertz (THz) waveguides. The periodic corrugation is in the form of rectangular blind holes (i.e. holes that do not completely perforate the metal film) that are fabricated using a multilayer construction. The approach allows for the creation of structures in which the hole depth can be more than four times the hole width. This is necessary to achieve tightly confined THz guided-wave modes. We find that the modes can be modeled using an effective cavity resonance model and that the mode properties depend sensitively on the depth of corrugation. We use numerical simulations to validate the experimental results. We also highlight the differences between simulations that incorporate idealized input parameters and our experimental measurements. Using these data, we fabricate and characterize a Y-splitter to demonstrate the utility of this approach.